Adjustable shelves are commonly associated with both the freezer compartment and the fresh food compartment of conventional side-by-side refrigerators. When the shelves are constructed as sliding shelves, opposite generally parallel side edges of the shelves rest upon and slide relative to horizontally aligned ribs or grooves formed as opposing pairs in the side walls of the freezer compartment, the fresh food compartment or both, or inner liners thereof. Typical of such shelves, which can be sliding, cantilevered and/or vertically step-adjusted, are disclosed in the following patents:
U.S. Pat. No.:Inventor:Patented:5,273,354Hermann et al.Dec. 28, 19935,362,145Bird et al.Nov. 8, 19945,403,084Kane et al.Apr. 4, 19955,429,433Bird et al.Jul. 4, 19955,441,338Kane et al.Aug. 15, 19955,454,638Bird et al.Oct. 3, 19955,540,493Kane et al.Jul. 30, 19965,735,589Herrmann et al.Apr. 7, 1998
The latter listing of patents are not only exemplary of adjustable shelving of the type just described, but the shelves thereof each include at least as one component thereof a piece of tempered glass about the periphery of which is an injection molded encapsulation, border or frame which totally peripherally encapsulates the tempered glass peripheral edge. Perhaps the simplest example of the latter is the shelf of U.S. Pat. No. 5,362,145 in which a rim 12 is molded around an entire perimeter edge 22 of a glass shelf member 12 and two opposite metallic side brackets 14 and 16 which support the overall shelf 10 in a cantilevered fashion from a pair of vertical tracks 44 located against a rear wall 20 of an associated refrigerator. In the embodiment of the shelf 110 of FIG. 2, the shelf slides relative to side brackets 140, 142 and is thereby constructed only from a piece of tempered glass 112 and a peripheral injection molded encapsulation, border or frame 118. The shelf 110 can slide along the side brackets 114, 116.
A shelf similarly constructed from a single piece of tempered glass and having secured to a peripheral edge thereof a peripheral encapsulation, border or frame is disclosed in application Ser. No.09/834,896 entitled a “Refrigerator Compartment Housing Vertically Adjustable Shelves” filed on Apr. 16, 2001 in the name of Craig Bienick and now Pat. No. 6,422,673 B1. The latter encapsulation is snap-secured to the glass panel, but the significance of this disclosure is that each shelf can be step-wise adjusted within an associated refrigerator compartment and is limited in its forward and rearward sliding movement by appropriate stops and abutments. Side border portions of the shelf are narrowed to accommodate stops or abutments carried by rails or guides of the refrigerator compartment.
The latter disclosure comes perhaps closest to resembling the present invention, though the present invention is considered an unobvious improvement thereover. Obviously, snap-securing a separately injection molded frame to a glass panel requires an additional manufacturing step which is cost-additive to the overall final cost of each shelf. Moreover, if an adhesive is used to secure the peripheral edges of the glass panel to the snap-secured frame, additional costs are encountered which include not only the cost of the adhesive but cleaning up adhesive if an overabundance of adhesive is utilized during the glass-to-encapsulation bonding process. Obviously, additional adhesive and adhesive clean-up problems increase the overall costs of such a shelf. Additionally, since side portions of the encapsulation are reduced in thickness, the same are weakened relative to the remaining thicker portions of the encapsulation rendering the encapsulation susceptible to breakage in these narrower side border portions. Thus, though the reduced thickness of the side border portions increases air flow in the refrigerator compartment, it also subjects the shelf to fracture in these areas of reduced thickness.